Tag: bilingualism

Around 48 seconds in, Murray Conque, imitating one of the characters he’s describing, delivers a punchline in French. The crowd, or at least part of it, gives a good laugh before he gets to any sort of English punchline or explanation. I missed what he said myself, other than calling the umpire an idiot at the end.

I was initially struck by this because it seemed as though the crowd knew what he was saying. I thought maybe this was a local Louisiana crowd that still had enough speakers that the joke worked or maybe the audience had some French speakers in general in it. Then I realized that people were probably just laughing at the obvious communication barrier between the two characters he was portraying. In that sense, the line almost seems almost like a mockery, with people laughing at the character, not with him.

This is possibly a direct contrast to what I described in a previous post with the bilingual joke in The Simpsons. That joke involved Spanish, which is certainly more widespread in the US than French and so likely to be understood. The Simpsons wasn’t mocking Hispanic people, they were simply banking on the idea that enough people would literally know what’s being said that it would be funny. Conque’s joke doesn’t seem to rely on that. In fact, his whole routine in that clip seems sort of like a mockery. It’s not that suspenders and small wooden houses don’t exist in Louisiana, it’s that those aren’t the only things that exist. They’re stereotypical, which I suppose is (or was) at least somewhat necessary for connecting to a wider audience, which is a bit of a shame.

When I saw the title, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I figured there was no way someone was doing comedy in Louisiana French, although comedy seems like a great arena for enriching and spreading the language. I also wasn’t expecting the comedian to be the butt of the jokes. It feels a little too self-deprecating and maybe Conque came to the same conclusion later on: in more recent clips he’s standing on typical stages wearing plain red suits.

Of course, there’s also the possibility that the intention was to convert any negative bias attached to these stereotypes as opposed to proving that Cajuns are respectable because they assimilate easily. I guess this is where the fine line is drawn between maintaining one’s identity and surviving within the larger culture.